Parks, courts and the school contribution: an urbanisation’s neighbourhood facilities

These are the rules of Chapter 5.1 of Joint Regulation No. 9473 on residential, commercial, industrial and institutional urbanisations, on the common spaces that must be provided, and on landscaping and fences. Rule 5.1.7 states it up front: every new residential urbanisation shall provide the minimum of common spaces for neighbourhood facilities or dotational uses for recreation, education, cultural activities and commerce set out below, as a complement to the parcelled space. Those facilities’ design adjusts to the design of the project they serve, so as to achieve efficient use of the facilities and satisfy the residents’ needs. This guide is for developers, for residents’ associations wanting to know what should have been handed over to them, and for families segregating among heirs.

The neighbourhood-facility obligations fall on every new residential urbanisation, and the regulation grades them by the project’s form: a single building, several buildings on one parcel, or several lots. Projects whose purpose is the subdivision of an inheritance or the inter vivos gift of land to family members are exempt from complying with the recreational and educational facility provisions, provided they include as part of the application documents, for inheritance cases, the declaratoria de herederos, and for family gift cases, a document stating the intention to give and the family relationship, signed by the corresponding donees as well as by the donor. Commercial, industrial or institutional urbanisations have their own access and buffer zone rules. And providing land for commercial facilities is authorised only when considering a residential project comprising two hundred and fifty or more basic dwelling units.

• In multi-lot residential urbanisations: one children’s play area per hundred lots or dwelling units, one sports court per three hundred, one playing field per four hundred, and a roofed structure for community activities of half a square metre per lot or basic unit, all with provisions for people with disabilities.Verified against the official source
• Communal recreation area: thirty square metres of flat land per lot or unit in projects of twenty to fifty-nine units, and twenty square metres per unit in projects of sixty or more, excluding slopes, graded to a gradient no greater than five per cent and provided with adequate water and electricity connections.Verified against the official source
• Educational facilities: six and one fifth square metres of urbanised land per lot or dwelling unit in every residential urbanisation project forming lots, or its equivalent in land or cash; where the land required is under two cuerdas, the economic contribution determined by OGPe with the agency concerned is required.Verified against the official source
• That completion of the neighbourhood facilities coincide with the date fifty per cent of the total dwelling units authorised for that phase have been completed, guaranteed by a bond until the permiso de uso único is obtained.Verified against the official source
• That the transfer of the land and recreational facilities be made by public deed to the Residents’ or Condominium Owners’ Association before the permiso de uso único is issued for the last fifty per cent of the units authorised in the phase.Verified against the official source
• In residential urbanisations: a solid, fixed and permanent fence on the boundary of every rear yard abutting a road, which may never have access to that road.Verified against the official source
• Noise and emanation mitigation works or measures for every residential development on the margin of the right of way of a toll motorway, expressway or arterial road existing or proposed in a Road Plan approved by the Planning Board.Verified against the official source

• A works programme for building the recreational facilities, filed by the owner with OGPe and the selected entity, plus a cost estimate; the works are guaranteed by a bond for the total cost in favour of the entity concerned.
• To claim the inheritance exemption: the declaratoria de herederos, included as part of the application documents.
• To claim the family-gift exemption: a document stating the intention to give and the family relationship, signed by the corresponding donees as well as by the donor.
• The corresponding public deed for transferring the land and recreational facilities in favour of the Residents’ or Condominium Owners’ Association.

1. 1

   Step 1: Identify your project’s form

   The regulation grades the minimum facilities by three forms. Residential urbanisation in a single building: a covered recreation area; a covered meeting area of not less than one and a half square metres per basic dwelling unit; and ADA-compliant recreational facilities for children and the elderly, with a minimum of two hundred square metres for the first forty units, three hundred square metres for the next up to one hundred and twenty, and ten square metres for each unit in excess of one hundred and twenty. Several buildings on one parcel: a covered meeting area of not less than half a square metre per unit; a children’s play area of a minimum two hundred square metres per each forty units with two or more bedrooms; and an active recreation facility for sports, such as basketball or a practice wall, of eight square metres per unit in projects of fifty units or more. Several lots: that is the best-known list, and it comes in the next step.

2. 2

   Step 2: Multi-lot urbanisation: the numbers

   For projects comprising four to nineteen lots or units, the economic contribution is determined by OGPe together with the agency concerned by Orden Administrativa, effective thirty days after publication in a general-circulation newspaper. For projects of twenty to fifty-nine units, a communal recreation area is set aside at thirty square metres of flat land, excluding slopes, per lot or unit. For projects of sixty or more units, an area of twenty square metres of flat land per unit is set aside. In both cases, that land is graded to a gradient no greater than five per cent and provided with adequate water and electricity connections. And the following are built, with provisions for people with disabilities: one children’s play area per hundred lots or units; one sports court per three hundred; one playing field per four hundred; and a roofed structure to house community activities of half a square metre per lot or basic unit.

3. 3

   Step 3: The school contribution: 6.2 square metres per lot

   Every residential urbanisation project forming lots provides six and one fifth square metres of urbanised land per lot or dwelling unit for developing educational facilities, or contributes its equivalent in land or cash. Where the land required is under two cuerdas, the economic contribution determined by OGPe together with the agency concerned by Orden Administrativa is required instead. We publish no figure for that contribution here: the chapter does not set one, it refers to an Orden Administrativa we did not read.

4. 4

   Step 4: The inheritance or family-gift exemption

   This is the part of the chapter most people need and fewest know. Projects whose purpose is the subdivision of an inheritance or the inter vivos gift of land to family members are exempt from complying with the recreational facility provisions, provided they include as part of the application documents: for inheritance cases, the declaratoria de herederos; and for family gift cases, a document stating the intention to give and the family relationship, signed by the corresponding donees as well as by the donor. The same exemption, with the same two documents, applies to the educational facility provisions. In the recreational exemption paragraph the regulation adds a sentence saying the recreational facilities will be common to all the project’s owners or tenants; we reproduce it as printed, odd as it reads inside an exemption paragraph.

5. 5

   Step 5: The fifty per cent rule

   This is the one that protects buyers. It is necessary to ensure the construction, installation and operation of the neighbourhood facilities proceeds at a faster pace than the construction of the dwelling units, so that completion of those facilities coincides with the date fifty per cent of the total projected dwelling units authorised for that phase have been completed. A bond is required guaranteeing the works until the permiso de uso único for the neighbourhood facilities or proposed cultural centre is obtained, a permit that must be obtained when fifty per cent of the use permits for the phase’s authorised dwelling units are filed. Once the use permit is granted, the bond posted by the developer or its successors may be cancelled.

6. 6

   Step 6: When the park is handed to the association

   The transfer of the land and recreational facilities is made by the corresponding public deed in favour of the Residents’ or Condominium Owners’ Association, where applicable. Properties intended for rental may be retained by the owner or transferred to the Residents’ or Condominium Owners’ Association, if one exists. And there is an express deadline: that land and those recreational facilities must be transferred to one of the entities named, or retained by the owner, before the permiso de uso único is issued for the last fifty per cent of the dwelling units authorised in that phase. The owner must file with OGPe and the selected entity a works programme and a cost estimate, and the works are guaranteed by a bond for the total cost in favour of the entity concerned.

7. 7

   Step 7: Where those facilities go

   Grouping the land for neighbourhood facilities on contiguous parcels is a primary objective, to achieve more intense use of the land. Although grouping the children’s play areas and the courts with the rest is not a requirement, grouping at least one children’s play area and the courts with the main core is an objective. Each children’s play area is accessible to the group of dwelling units it serves without requiring street crossings. They may sit at the end of two dead-end streets, with a physical barrier preventing vehicle access. And pedestrian walks less than three metres wide are avoided, as far as possible, as access to them. The siting of commercial facilities is determined by OGPe or the hierarchy I-III autonomous municipality, taking into account accessibility to the shopping centre from inside and outside the project and favouring locations close to the main access.

8. 8

   Step 8: Commercial facilities and the 250-unit threshold

   When considering the development of a residential project comprising two hundred and fifty or more basic dwelling units, the owner may be authorised to provide land for developing commercial facilities complementing the project. OGPe or the hierarchy I-III autonomous municipality determines the type and size of commercial lot under District C-L. The maximum area of the land to be devoted is determined on the basis of twenty square metres of land per lot or basic dwelling unit, and the gross construction area has a maximum of twenty-five square feet per lot or unit. The source changes unit between those two figures — metres for the land, feet for the construction — and we reproduce it as printed. A bond is required guaranteeing the works until the permit for the proposed commercial facility is obtained, and once the permiso de uso único is granted the bond may be cancelled. And a rule that resolves old cases: residential urbanisations that were required to provide commercial facilities as part of the neighbourhood facilities but were not qualified under the authorised commercial use parameters are evaluated under a C-L District.

9. 9

   Step 9: Accesses, fences and the visibility rules

   Every new lot has access through a duly registered public street or a private street dedicated to access, and new residential lots in urbanisations have access only to local streets. New residential lots under one cuerda may not have access to main streets, avenues or the marginals of avenues and expressways. Every rear yard abutting a road requires a solid, fixed and permanent fence, which may never have access to that road. The street pattern facilitates community life by avoiding lengths over two hundred and fifty metres for residential streets. And in multi-building projects the regulation goes into unusual detail: pedestrian walks are laid out and planted so that someone walking them can see at least five metres ahead along the whole section without blind corners; no construction providing hiding places is permitted within two metres of a walk or sidewalk; and planting that obstructs visibility of open common areas is not permitted, opaque barriers over one point two metres being deemed to obstruct visibility.

10. 10

    Step 10: Mandatory fences and buffer zones

    Fences are erected as needed for security and privacy, provided they are not a traffic hazard, and must be installed at the rear or side of lots where any of these conditions occurs: the rear or side is adjacent to a cave, cavern, channel or water body, such as retention ponds, streams, rivers, lakes, springs or sinkholes; along the bank of a channel or water body where a street or walk borders it; where a slope is over four metres high; between lots, where rough or rocky ground lets the slope’s inclination approach the vertical more closely than a ratio of one and a half horizontal to vertical in cut and its height exceeds two metres; where a special stabilisation or a retaining wall creates that same condition; and to separate land dedicated to public use from private land in the provision of neighbourhood facilities. Chain-link fences are not permitted on the edges of public spaces. On buffering: where an industrial urbanisation or institutional project abutting developed residential sectors is proposed, the zones or works needed to mitigate noise, odours and lights are provided; and where a residential urbanisation or institutional project abutting agricultural land is proposed, those needed to avoid negative impact and development pressure on that land are provided.

OGPe or the hierarchy I-III Autonomous Municipality evaluates the project and determines the type and size of the commercial lot under District C-L, as well as the siting of the commercial facilities. The economic contributions for recreational facilities in projects of four to nineteen lots and for educational facilities are determined by OGPe together with the agency concerned by Orden Administrativa. The works programme and cost estimate are filed with OGPe and the selected entity. And the transfer of the land and recreational facilities is made by public deed in favour of the Residents’ or Condominium Owners’ Association.

• Subdividing an inheritance without attaching the declaratoria de herederos and paying contributions you were exempt from.
• Gifting to a family member without the document stating the intention to give and the family relationship, signed by donees and donor.
• Leaving the park for last: it must be finished when fifty per cent of the phase’s dwellings are completed.
• Issuing the permiso de uso único for the last fifty per cent without having transferred the land and recreational facilities.
• Counting the recreation area including slopes: the regulation asks for flat land, excluding them.
• Giving a residential lot under one cuerda access from an avenue or an expressway marginal.
• Leaving a rear yard abutting a road without the solid, fixed and permanent fence the regulation requires.
• Putting a chain-link fence on the edge of a public space.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Oficina de Gerencia de Permisos (OGPe)

  OGPe

  docs.pr.gov

• Permit Management Office

  ogpe

  ogpe.pr.gov